Even Bayh's Short-Term Memory Loss

January 26, 2010

Centrist Democrats in the Senate are coming out, one by one, against the possibility of using reconciliation to pass health care reform. Here's Evan Bayh's explanation, via Politico:

Just ramming through a bill on a purely party-line vote on a strictly partisan basis will not do much to generate the kind of progress around here on other issues that we need. We need to focus on things where we have a consensus.

Perhaps Bayh has forgotten, but the Senate already passed health care reform on a strictly partisan basis. It happened in December, when all Republicans voting against the Senate's version of reform and all Democrats (plus two independents) voting for it.

And, just in case Bayh's memory is foggy, that wasn't because the Democrats failed to reach out to the Republicans. It was because the Republicans rebuffed every overture, declining to support the bill despite numerous Democratic concessions.